by Caiti Beth McKinney

Hi everyone,

This month I want to highlight Liana Alexandra (1947-2011), an incredibly accomplished and prolific composer, musician, and educator from Romania. She was a huge advocate for the performance of contemporary music and for understanding composers as individuals and not lumping them together in one category. She resisted labels like “traditionalist” or “avant-garde,” preferring to compose as her piece demanded. Alexandra composed in nearly every genre, including a substantial collection of pieces for large forces like orchestra and wind ensemble, as well as a wide variety of chamber music.

Luckily for us horn players, this includes several works that feature our instrument, including her sonata for horn and piano, Intersections. Available publicly on IMSLP (as are all the pieces I will discuss here), Intersections is a workout in timbral complexities and interpretation for both players. The piece incorporates elements of both Modernism and Minimalism, using repeated rhythmic motifs interspersed with moments of calm melody or dramatic glissandi and flutter tongue to create, to my ear, a sense of conversation between three parties—two sides of the horn player and the piano. Intersections is a piece that bears repeat listening to gain full understanding as there is quite a bit of depth to Alexandra’s writing in this work.

Alexandra also composed both a wind quintet, Images Interrupted, and a brass quintet, Collages. Collages plays with timbre and texture throughout the work, using extended techniques like stopped horn, glissandi, pitch bending, and mutes to create vivid imagery that alternates between ethereal calm and frenzied activity. Images Interrupted is another exercise in extended techniques and modern sounds. The first movement opens with an unmeasured, out-of-time feel, slowly stacking and unstacking the members of the quintet and incorporating dramatic dynamic shifts. The entire work calls for a true collaboration between players as well as a holistic understanding of the score. This under-recorded work would be an excellent project for a wind quintet with “new music” experience.

by Inman Hebert

As we begin another year of university, music students prepare to learn vast amounts of music theory, history, and pedagogy. In mentally preparing for yet another busy semester, I considered how to respond to the questions naysayers ask about the value of studying music.

For music majors, we possess a passion that drives us to study, understand, and practice music in developing our skills to turn our pursuit into a career. However, skeptics often point to statistics that suggest many of us, particularly as performance majors, may never reach these goals, or at least not to the extent once thought possible.

As musicians, we all inherently recognize the philosophical and esoteric beauty of music. Even if it is difficult to verbalize, music provides us with a universal language with which to express ourselves. With an instrument, we can convey the spectrum of the human experience. (For me, the unique power of music solves any Kafkaesque existential crises inherent in proclaiming myself a music major.)

While we could endlessly discuss the philosophy behind music’s power, many critics would argue that philosophy cannot solve the real-life struggles of the performance aspects of being a music major. For our families, we need to discuss the social and emotional benefits and creative opportunities found in music; however, how can we respond to those who only speak the language of business to question the study of music? Focusing on the soft skills increasingly valued by employers allows us to communicate how music study prepares students to contribute to any work environment.

Nearly all music majors know the experience of managing a busy schedule. We often take more classes than students in other majors, all while handling ensemble, chamber music, and individual practice schedules. Our lifestyle requires a great degree of dedication, adaptability, and time management skills which prove valuable in the workplace and elsewhere. Our schedules require a strong work ethic that prepares us for the responsibilities all professionals must juggle.

To develop virtuosity in music, students must adopt a mindset of accepting and responding to constructive feedback in lessons and apply that input in our practice to facilitate growth. Playing an instrument with a variety of difficult intricacies, we must learn to constructively problem-solve the horn’s unique challenges. All this effort leads to the additional challenges of addressing, at some level, the burdens of performance anxiety. Years of honing these skills provide us with the adaptability to perform well in any professional environment.

Music also teaches us about collaboration. Even the most famous soloists in the world work with conductors and pianists. We often collaborate in both large ensembles and chamber groups. Orchestras can only be successful when all members fill their roles under the conductor’s vision. Chamber music teaches us to cooperate with our peers, often compromising to reach a musical vision. These interpersonal skills serve as the foundation for professional success.

To those who doubt the viability of our major—including even ourselves at times—learning and communicating the soft skills we acquire as music majors can silence the naysayers.

by Caiti Beth McKinney

Hello everyone!

This month, I want to share with you just a little about the outstanding compositions of an incredibly accomplished but seldom remembered French composer, Elsa Barraine (1910-1999). In addition to her music, Barraine was also a fierce anti-Nazi activist during the German occupation of France in World War II. Of Jewish heritage herself, Barraine used her music and her skills with the written word to resist the atrocities occurring in her country and abroad.

Barraine was born to a musical family. Her father was the principal cellist of the Parisian Orchestre de l’Opéra until he was ousted by the Nazi regime in 1943, and her mother was a skilled pianist and chorus member of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. Elsa enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire at the very young age of nine. There, she studied with famous composer Paul Dukas alongside other notables of her generation, including Yvonne Desportes, Claude Arrieu, and Olivier Messiaen. In 1929, when she was only 19 years old, Barraine won the prestigious Prix de Rome for her cantata about Joan of Arc entitled La vierge guerrière, making her only the fourth woman in history to win the award.

There is so much more to say about Barraine’s life and career that is beyond the scope of this column, but I would strongly encourage all readers to learn more about her outstanding achievements and her dedication to making a difference in the world. When it comes to the horn, Barraine wrote several excellent works for orchestra, including a tone poem entitled Pogromes she wrote while residing in Mussolini’s Italy. In addition to these larger scale works, Barraine composed a short piece for horn and piano, Crépuscules and Fanfare, which is becoming increasingly popular as a recital piece. This short, four-minute work is evocative of the “twilight” after which it is named. The lyrical and melancholy melody of the first movement is richly chromatic while remaining firmly within the world of tonality. The fanfare is joyful and technically challenging. It moves through the full register of the horn and showcases the performer’s ability to perform a repeated high B!

by Nikolette LaBonte, Principal Horn, Calgary Philharmonic

I’ve been a somewhat regular SNL viewer for most of my teenage and adult life. Throughout the years watching it, even as casts and writers change, one role has remained a constant presence on the show: the Impressionist. Often featuring heavily in political sketches, the Impressionist can recreate the presence of the most recent headline-making figure and bring them to whatever sketch has been prepared for that week’s cold open. Behind the scenes, I imagine these performers spending time in front of their computers, pulling up clips of the person they are trying to emulate. The actors take notice of hallmark features: tone of voice, inflection, hand gestures, body language, etc. Then they work out how to mimic them: what shape their oral cavity needs to have, how their tongue should move, into what physical shape they need to contort their bodies, and so on.

I’m not a comedian, despite how funny I might think I am. But I’ve been thinking a lot about impressions on the horn. Go to www.hornexcerpts.org right now and click on an excerpt you like. Listen to the first reference recording and think about how you could “do an impression” of that horn player. Just like a comedian, think about the shape of their oral cavity, their air, how they are articulating, their phrase shapes. Then take those ideas and try to incorporate them into your own playing. You might not sound exactly like they do; but do you sound more like them than before?

Impressions are the building blocks of exploring new colors, phrasing points, and inflections. Here’s an example: I am listening to a recording of the Beethoven 6 third movement excerpt, and I hear that the sound is wide and round, and the articulation is minimal. If I want to sound like that, I’ll modify my oral cavity to use an OH vowel, increase my air support to accommodate the larger space, and keep my articulation as low and back as possible. If I do all those things, I can sound a lot like that player’s rendition of Beethoven 6. Do I personally like that approach to that excerpt? Not entirely. But I do like the idea of that floaty sound, so I might try to modify my default oral cavity so that it’s a bit more open than usual…maybe with an AW vowel. But even if I don’t like everything about that approach to Beethoven 6, I LOVE it for Brahms 1. I’ll take the impression over to that excerpt and try it out there—and now my sound is rounder and broader, and it fits the character of Brahms perfectly!

Not sure where to start? Try something! Through trial and error, you’ll find you get better, just as comedians master their abilities over many years. You’ll notice which variables you can change in your own playing to be able to sound like any recording you might hear. And slowly, you’ll discover how to use these variables to create your own musical identity pieced together from various impressions, with varying tone colors, articulation styles, and interpretations. And maybe someday, other players will be working on impressions of you!